Battle for the BIA: G.E.E. Lindquist and the Missionary Crusade against John Collier (review)

The focus of this monograph is a biographical presentation of John Collier, the longest-serving commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia), and G. E. E. Lindquist, a prominent leader in the Protestant missionary movement during Collier's administration. Clearly, Daily demonstrates that these men bear an opposing and reactionary relationship to one another. Throughout the text, he shows that these men personify the struggle within the U.S. government to determine policy about Indigenous peoples. He also shows that these men represent and articulate the logic, or at least the thinking, behind much of the U.S. government's assimilationist policy regarding Indigenous peoples in the first half of the twentieth century.

Daily details the beginning of John Collier's career and his vocal opposition to the bia, claiming it fostered and perpetuated a wardship status for Indians. He traces Collier's rise in federal bureaucracy, becoming the longest serving bia commissioner in its history. Befitting his early opposition to the institution, Collier's twelve-year command was marked by enormous changes in social policy and was plagued with tremendous difficulties—if not outright opposition. To illustrate that latter point, Daily traces the rise of Swedish immigrant, missionary, and devote assimilationist G. E. E Lindquist. Almost perfectly, Lindquist's life mirrors Collier's, culminating in Lindquist's four-decade-long "Crusade against John Collier." Indeed, I would argue that their lives have such synergy that a greater account of their beliefs, goals, and, ultimately, their roles in developing U.S. governmental policy is required. Daily effectively demonstrates this necessity at the outset, and throughout the six chapters of his text he thoroughly details the specific and personal rationales of their work, which typify the relationship that these men shared.

Daily contextualizes of his examination of Collier and Lindquist in the relationship of missionary activities and the bia at the start of the twentieth century. As part of the greater agenda of federal policy to assimilate Indians into what was considered the more acceptable religion of Christianity, to encourage them in the practice of individual rights, and to integrate them into American society, the missions and the bia worked together to "manage" Indians. Describing the relationship as a partnership, Daily says that "the bia helped missionaries gain easy access to the Indians by allowing them to operate religious education programs in federal boarding schools and by granting them tribal lands on which to build churches." And, in return for this assistance, "missionaries supported the bia's expanding programs by promoting the doctrine of Indian wardship. According to this doctrine, Indians were wards of the state who were not yet capable of supporting themselves in a cutthroat capitalist economy" (4).

This partnership, however, was not an homogenous one. Daily argues that the Protestant missionaries could be divided into two different groups based on their approach. The first, the gradualists, typified early on by Lindquist, urged for policies that advocated a gradual assimilation of Indians. This group worked well with and was supported by the bia. The second group, the aggressive reformers or abolitionists, thought the bia was holding Indian people back and advocated a "sink-or-swim approach to rapid assimilation." Both groups shared the assimilationist goal, and they worked towards "modernizing" Indians and developing Indian lands. Focusing on the gradualist approach in the beginning of the book, Daily examines the work and philosophy of Lindquist and the relationship of his approach to that of the federal government.

The relationship changed, however, when a long-standing opponent of the bia and Indian wardship, John Collier, was appointed to be commissioner in 1933. Collier, well known for his attempts to reform the bia in the decade prior to his appointment, had already been butting heads with Lindquist over the emphasis on goals of assimilation and the role of the federal government in the lives of Indians. Describing the effects...